


On Soapy Heels

by LadyChi



Category: Bones
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-27
Updated: 2010-03-27
Packaged: 2017-10-25 18:56:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyChi/pseuds/LadyChi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brennan's birthday party leads to both characters thinking about what it is they can't have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Soapy Heels

  
_So glide away on soapy heels  
And promise not to promise anymore  
And if you come around again  
then I will take,  
then I will take  
chain from off the door..._  
Ingrid Michaelson, “The Chain”

Brennan's floating on a haze of wine and the buzz of good company. Booth's hand is nestled in the small of her back. His hand. On the small of her back. His aftershave in her nostrils, the feel of the fabric of his suit in her hands.

His suit.

In her hands.

She has flashes of a different kind of waltz than the band is playing now – the kind of waltz where the give and take of the strong beat against the weaker two has to do with clothes hitting the floor, the pulse of mouths meeting and retreating. It's headier than the wine she's drinking, and so she takes another sip to ground her in this reality.

Angela pulls her away with a, “Sweetie. _God._ This song. I've just gotta dance. Don't you want to dance?”

And Brennan can't help but agree. She's thinking of elaborate dances where hands just barely touch and the dancers move away from each other, eyes meeting across the room. She's thinking of an Austen sexuality.

But there's this beat. It's moving through her whole body, from the very floor to the walls, and it vibrates her skin and her muscles and her bones. Someday, someone will look at her bones – and they might be able to tell that on this night, she threw her hands in the air and shook her hips and looked over her shoulder at the man she –

she--

dances.

Angela hooks her arms around Brennan's waist and whispers. “Wanna have a little fun?”

Brennan's too distracted to say no, and so together they move their hips in a way that might be construed from the outside as sexual motion, but they're talking about fashion and shoes. Brennan's self-control is slipping, and when Angela's hands slip down on her hips, her hands match and they move in perfect unison. Though opposite, this has always been the case for them: they march to a beat so similar it takes no effort to achieve synchronicity.

She looks over and she catches Booth's eyes. There's a whole solar system in his pupils. He's got whole solar systems in his body, she knows. Tissues and organs and cells that move in patterns as predictable as the ocean, as the moon, as the Earth around the sun. If anyone could echo the universe, in all of its glorious duplicity, it would be Seeley Booth. Hard as nails one minute, soft to the touch the next. Honest and deceitful. Loyal and true and yet mercurial. He's unpredictable. He's fascinating.

“Sweetie, it loses some of the mystery if you stare at him the whole night,” Angela says.

“He's incomprehensible,” Brennan says, almost desperately. “I can't wrap my head around him.”

“Good,” Angela says, definitively. “Wrap something else around him instead.”

It flashes through her brain. Wrapping her legs around his waist, his mouth following the valley of her breasts, the dog tags he always wears falling, as inevitable as gravity, towards the center of her thighs. Her hair pulled back and yet weighted down by the sweat the coats her body. She wants it so bad it hurts.

“I can't do it, Ange,” she whispers. “What if I can't do it?”

“Can't do what? Bren. Go drink another glass of wine and do something stupid.”

Brennan gives her a look, but it doesn't register with Angela, or she chooses to ignore it. Either could be true with Angela, and Brennan's not got a terrible lot of brain cells functioning at the moment.

At the bar, she takes another glass of white wine in her hands, and she's lifting it to her lips when she knows he's right behind her.

“Whoa, Bones. Gonna slow down there?” He's looking at her with big brown eyes, and she wants to ask him if it's all right if she somehow loses herself in the universe of him.

“No, I think I'm fine.” She waves a hand. “It's socially acceptable to become publicly intoxicated on one's birthday.”

Booth grins. “Yeah, Bones. It is.”

“Are you publicly intoxicated?” Normally she'd be able to tell, but the thoughts are arriving in her brain a half-second too late.

“No, Bones. I'm not. I'm enjoying myself, though. I'll be ready to give you a ride home when you want it,” he says, steadily.

Booth's always steady. Except for when he's not.

Except for when the machines are breathing for him, and measuring his brainwaves, and he's jealous of Jared Booth and he's saying things like _my dad drank_ and looking at her with eyes bright with promises she never asked of him.

She says nothing, but she finishes the glass of wine.

**

Her key turns in the lock and she turns to look at him, in that too-steady way of people who are obviously drunk and know it. “Thank you, Booth. I'll see you soon.”

“Are you going to be okay, Bones? I don't think I've ever seen you drink that much.”

She half-smiles, and her hand cups his cheek, as tender as a mother with a child. “I felt celebratory.”

“Another birthday, eh?”

“Another birthday.” She smiles. “You're still here.”

“Yeah, Bones.” He smiles and takes her hand. “Thanks for that.”

“I never wanted you to leave.” She closes her eyes, and leans against the door. “I never wanted to leave you.”

This is a sore spot with him, but she's drunk and he's been raised to be a gentleman. “Bones, neither one of us is going anywhere.”

“You say that, but it's demonstrably not true.” She sighs. “It's inevitable. The FBI promotes you, I take a new position, and then it's... what? Coffee.”

“Bones. We're more than coffee. We're more than pie at the diner at all hours of the night.”

“Are we?” Bones laughs. “I didn't want you to be my best friend. It just... happened. I always thought it would only be Angela, but then here you are... and you promise never to leave, and you don't.”

He remembers, in a flash, the quiet snick of her skirt hitting the floor. The click of her heels against the wood floor. The silk of her bra. The silk of her center. The taste of her mouth – flavored only slightly by the glass of wine they'd had before he left the bar. He's Seeley Booth, the man who makes the call, who has a wife he calls Bren, with a group of employees who love him. But he shakes that off and returns to the now.

“Bones, I'm not gonna leave you.” If he were Seeley now, he'd press their bodies close and remind her with his height, with the breadth of his shoulders, with the passion of a man who left the army and left the man and became his own man. He'd remind her of their promises, of what they meant to each other.

He can't do that here. Sometimes he wants to go back.

He can see in her eyes that she wants that. She wants him, but... she's not in control and if he ever does...

If he ever does, he wants the light in her eyes to be hers, and not the wine's. He wants to not have ghosts standing behind them of people who never existed except in their minds. He wants it to be Seeley and Temperance. He wants there to be promises voiced. He wants there to be the press of hand against hand and heart against heart and sex against sex and he wants there to be life. Coursing through both of them, vibrating. He wants so much for them.

He kisses her hand and turns the knob of her door. “Goodnight, Temperance.”

She takes his hand and lays her cheek against it before she kisses it quickly and uses the name only his family and the women who have ever seen him naked call him. “Goodnight... Seeley.”

He waits in her hallway until he hears the click of the chain, securing her inside. And him out.

Then he sticks his hands in his pockets and walks down the hallway, tossing his poker chip and whistling a jaunty tune.

Someday he'll come back.

Someday there won't be a chain.  



End file.
